Convolutions of Fate
by AbbaLane
Summary: Severus Snape is sent back to relive his life, but he does not meet Lily Evans on that fateful day in the park. Instead, years later, sixteen-year-old Lily waltzes into his Potions class, idly toying with the idea of playing with her brooding Professor.
1. Chapter 1

"Bloody git!" Ronald Weasley spat out in a hushed but bitter whisper, as Professor Snape calmly passed out the graded papers.

"Can't believe he'd give us such low marks just because he hates us," his friend readily quipped.

Severus smirked. The boy still thought he hated him, a lifetime later? No, not at all. Severus Snape had no need whatsoever to hate Harry Potter – not _this _Harry Potter. The boy's healthy face with its mane of dark hair so akin to his father's and his piercing blue eyes so like his mother's (blue, not green, blue, my friends!) evoked nothing but disinterested apathy on the Professor's part. The days of hating Harry Potter for his father's misdeeds and his mother's misplaced affections were not only long over, but – for all practical purposes in this impractical universe – had never existed.

And yet, it was ironic to note. Who would have thought that living his life over again, Severus Tobias Snape would once more be a bitter, sardonic Hogwarts professor accused of ill-favoring the universally favored Harry James Potter.

It was this little bit of semi-amusing irony that Severus chose to peruse as his students busied away on the assigned potion.

When he lay dying in the Shrieking Shed, and some metaphysical being offered his poor over-sensitive soul to relive his life, Severus Snape – the fool, the fool! – had acquiesced instantaneously.

Opening his small, gray, innocent, nine-year-old eyes, he remarked with palpable excitement that he was back on _that _day – the fateful day when he first saw his Lily. The dream he had just had – that vivid sequence of endless years of painful memories – made him sure of that. How he could be simultaneously convinced that his experiences were mere figments of his subconscious mind, yet so unfailingly believe that he would meet that same girl on that same day – was deemed too complex a query, and promptly put aside.

He rushed to the park. He awaited her behind that same luscious green bush.

Sunset, dusk, dawn, sunrise.

She never came. There was no red-haired girl with magic. And as Severus wept uncontrollably, he missed for the first time in his life even her pest of a sister. There was no plain magicless girl either. The Evans sisters never came.

Not on that day, or the next. Or any of the days to follow. This glorified afterlife was ingloriously Lily-less. The promised new life turned out lifeless.

He told himself diligently not to be a fool. He staunchly repeated – even then, even now! – that what he had lived through was nothing more than an overly elaborate dream.

Why then did he still possess every ounce of magic that he had learned in that prior doom life?

Why did he know with such precision all the other meaningless details – all those other people, who never mattered, but nonetheless did not quite fail to exist?

He saw James Potter in Hogwarts. The toerag did not torture him nearly as much as the first time around. With no Lily, there was likewise no competition. James happily settled for Mary Mcdonald, to whose affections Severus had no pretensions whatsoever. So the lucky little miserable Snape received no more bullying than what his bookish pursuits and unfortunate looks warranted. With his uncommonly honed magical prowess of a 38-year-old man and eerie foreknowledge of the future, Severus aptly escaped even that.

He knew enough of Voldemort's secrets to bring on a far more speedy end to the war. There was, of course, no joining of Death Eaters in this lifetime. He would heed his darling Lily's advice for hundreds of lifetimes to come, whether she graced them with her presence or not. And besides, he was far too jaded by now to delude himself with childish visions of power and grandeur.

He saw Harry Potter at Hogwarts too, looking once again disturbingly akin to his father. Only this time the disturbing did not disturb him. Severus had no scruples whatsoever in observing Mary's blue eyes in James's handsome face._ Let them be, let them be, where is my Lily?_

And that was the worst. In this world that was – for all intents and purposes – a far better place, as they would say, than the previous one – in this world of avoided wars and spared children, Severus Snape felt more stifled and bitter than in its bloody painful predecessor of a world. If sending him back to relive his life was nothing but a ruse to get him to contribute positively to the Wizarding World – even _then _why not give him his darling?

_Lily, Lily, Lily, my Lily. Where are you, oh Lily?_

Of all possible punishments, was this not the most cruel? Had he been sent to a new life with her, he would be eternally grateful. Had he been sent to a new life without her and with his mind a blank, he would at least have the possibility of some simulacrum of normalcy – conceivably, he might have even doused his overabundance of love on some other unfortunate sweeting. But no! No, he had to be sent to this hellish torture where no Lily lived, but where such vivid memories of her were alive and ablaze in his mind.

And so, once again, here he was. Thirty six years of age. Potions Master. Long black robes. Confident, prohibitive posture. Thin line for lips. Smirk, no smile. Large, hooked nose in a bitter face. Long black hair that he did not bother to wash as regularly as he should. And a snide, cynical attitude that he did not bother to curb.

"Has anyone gotten even remotely close to brewing something passable?" He addressed his students in a tired tone. "However much I might _relish _your company, we do not have forever. There is a second potion you need to be brewing today."

There was Hermione Granger's hand in the air, and sheepish looks of half-fright from everyone else. _Boring. Boring._

"Professor?" This three-syllabled bit of music came from the classroom door, and Severus froze still, unwilling to turn. _Hallucinating inside my own classroom? Oh gods, is there any punishment that you _won't _send me?_

But this was no punishment.

There, in the frame of the open door, one hand resting on the side and the other playing listlessly with a fire-orange curl, stood his long-awaited reward.

Lily Evans. Brilliant emerald eyes under a well-calculated layer of mascara. Smartly-fitting Hogwards robes, with the hem raised a little higher than most of the other sixth-year girls, revealing a pair of perfectly sculpted knees above smooth, pale, alluring calves with no socks and delectable high-heeled shoes. Lovely fiery hair pulled into a casual bun, with one loose spark still twirling between pretty manicured fingers. One neatly-plucked eye brow raised in half-question. Delectable painted lips, one corner raised in half-smile. Sixteen years old.

Cruel, generous, ironic, diabolical, wonderful, fateful Face had placed the sixteen-year-old Lily Evans straight into the thirty-six-year-old Severus Snape's Potions classroom, after making him live through three repeated, empty, meaningless decades.

Severus could have laughed at the absurdity of it all, had it not seemed so perfectly natural after the unnaturally absurd three-quarters of a century he had already lived through in his two combined lifetimes. And had he not been overly preoccupied with an entire waterfall of more important feelings. _This _was not the time for his sarcastic humor.

He had not seen her in a lifetime, if he had ever even seen her at all. Yet her features were recognized by his parched mind instantaneously, as was her musical voice. Happy, aroused, relieved, terrified, shy. He was so terribly out of practice at this challenging task: beholding the Lily Evans.

His lack of response must have been beginning to show, since the girl stepped closer to him, and dropped the hair-fondling hand to rest gently on his arm, as if unaware of the bolt of electricity it would send through his famished body.

"Professor Snape? I am Lily Evans, the transfer from Beauxbatons." When did his Lily acquire a tint of French accent? "I am sorry to enter halfway through the lesson, but I have come straight from the headmaster's office, as soon as my schedule was finalized."

_Steady, heart, steady! Let the mouth speak._

"A p-pleasure, Miss Evans." _There, that was not so hard. Now direct her to take a seat. Don't mind that it will remove her divine hand from your unworthy shoulder, never mind it at all. Just do your job, Severus, NOW. "_Please, take any available seat you like." _I am missing her little hand already. _"Yes, next to Mr. Parker is perfectly fine."

With some semblance of control, he continued his lesson. Perhaps, with some luck, he might finish the intolerable hour without breaking apart into a heap of tears, or cries of joy, or semen. Only sixty more minutes of self-restraint to save his blasted dignity.

But even that would be denied him. As he spoke in the usual, sarcastically bored tones, languidly imparting the knowledge on his uninterested pupils, he noticed his love, his life, his darling, leaning dangerously close to the now repulsive Mr. Parker.

_Jealousy, oh the most vivid manifestation of love! How long it has been, since I last have felt thee?_

"Mr. Parker, Miss Evans, is anything the matter?"

She smiled at him. She _smiled_!

"I am sorry Professor, but I do not have this textbook – we were using a different one at Beauxbatons. Frank has been so kind as to let me share his."

_Share? Share! _Lily and sharing did not cohabitate in Severus's overtaxed mind.

"I have some spares, Miss Evans."

"Oh truly? That is wonderful, thank you, Professor. May I have one?" And here, Severus found it quite singular to note that she did not make any move to get up to retrieve the book, instead merely extending her hand to him, awaiting the textbook to be deposited into her smooth, lovely palm. Her smile was broad and bright, but there was something more to it, a knowing twinkle in her beautiful eyes.

Somehow, Severus still had enough mental capacities left intact to debate whether it would truly be wise to do the short walk to her desk himself, fetching the book for one of his students. But he lasted all of two seconds.

And as he deposited his own copy of the textbook into her awaiting hand, he was more than amply rewarded for that simple errand by being able to touch, for only one delicious glimpse of a moment, the soft skin of her hand with his own coarse paw. His heart beat faster.

And Lily Evans, with a faint smirk and a curiously raised brow, replied with a coquettish "thanks."


	2. Chapter 2

Lily Evans was determined to make the best of things. She would be lying if she said that she was thrilled about this transfer to dreary old England and its dreary old Hogwarts. But with a disposition as cheerful as her fire-red hair, the sixteen-year-old Ms. Evans was not so easily daunted.

She allowed herself to wallow in righteous self-pity for no more than some miserly half hour. That ample time sufficed to lament how unfair the universe had been in laying the blame on _her _and not on Pierre.

What kind of utter lack of logic would lead not only the Beauxbatons teachers but her own parents to think that _she _was the source of the problem? Funny, really. To think that she was in lust with him, and not vice versa. To imagine that it was her flirtatious smiles of an enamored teenager that had been a distraction (to her, not him!), and not his lecherous grins of an obsessed adult that had focused on her pale freckled face since she was no more than twelve.

Lily, in a detached and matter-of-fact way, had considered for a brief delicious moment of self-righteousness the idea of revealing the truth. Professor du Bois had been in love with her for years. _Her _heart remains untouched. But what good would that do? He would be immediately thrown out and shunned. But she? She would still be withdrawn, most likely, to the very same old dreary England with its ominous Hogwarts (again, for her own protection).

This way, Pierre retained his job, and with it – his pathetic attachment to her. Having a grown man begging for her affection had its charm. And once his love wears out, there would always be good old blackmail.

And so she quietly allowed her bags to be packed up. Let them put the delinquent child on a train to far far away, away from the unsuspecting innocuous professor.

Lily Evans let out an unladylike snort.

England solemnly matched and raised all her expectations of dreariness. But Hogwarts turned out, oh luscious towers, to be not entirely without beauty.

She was assigned a pleasant moderately-attractive girl by the name of Cho Chang as her guide (an easy future conquest for Lily's posse of female fans – "no, honey, that's not how you blow it"). And as they passed the interminable corridors of that dreary old (beautiful, beautiful!) Hogwarts, Lily's spirits rose further upon remarking several not unpleasant looking boys. Like that cocky blond. Cho seemed to wrinkle her diminutive nose in distaste.

"Slytherin? What's wrong with Slytherin?" Lily couldn't care less about silver and green, but Cho seemed to have a thing for the notorious Harry Potter, who was at odds with the delicious blond and most of the rest of that house.

"So is Harry Potter in your house?"

"Oh. No, he's in Gryffindor – the home of the brave."

"And you? Sorry, I forgot already."

"Ravenclaw, the house of the nerds." The bright spark of laughter Cho emitted at her own joke indicated that she by no means considered herself a 'nerd.' Lily liked a good dose of mock-self-deprecating humor. It showed confidence.

Lily was only human, and as such did feel curious to meet the famed Mr. Potter. But his picture in the papers never appealed to her much more than the average male. He would make a fine conquest, but that was about all.

Cho got increasingly more at ease in the new redhead's company, and became even a slight bit adventurous, venturing into the dungeons as part of the extended tour. There were some heavy footsteps followed by an ominous swoosh of black robes, and Lily's not-quite-Gryffindor companion forcibly tugged the inquisitive girl's sleeve and hastily docked them back behind a pillar.

"Don't let him see us," Cho murmured softly, her eyes wide with panic.

Lily, with no particular affinity for any Hogwarts house and with some moderate amounts of all of them mixed in her blood, chose that moment to display her Gryffindor trait, tempered with a modicum of Slytherin slyness. Peeking from behind the damp column, she assuaged her curiosity and studied the tall, dark-eyed, hawk-nosed, thin-lipped, black-haired man. He looked to be between thirty and forty, with the most stony expression she had ever beheld.

"Who is that?"

"Professor Snape," Cho responded in a whisper somewhere between admiration and disdain, cowering further away. "He is the nastiest professor at the school, and would likely give us both detention just for being here. Not to mention deduct house points... though you haven't even been sorted yet..."

"So he teaches here?" For some reason, Lily recalled Pierre's warm, musky smell.

"Yes, potions. A darn mean teacher, too. The whole school is afraid of him, even his darling Slytherins."

"Mmm," Lily hummed, almost in appreciation. Professor Snape's imposing figure was not unattractive. He was just the sort of man she would love to –

_To what, Lily? To watch begging for your kisses?_

_Yep, precisely._

Although she would never admit it, there was a little something inside her that Pierre had broken, messed up, unhinged. The mild caresses of her classmates were no longer enough. She wanted, craved, _needed _every now and then the harsher stroke of a more withered touch, the power that came from reducing a grown, strong, self-sufficient man (not a whimpering youngling) to pleading and begging in her delicate hands.

There had been but a handful of male professors young enough to rouse her interest at Beauxbatons, and Pierre had been awfully protective of her. So she had not truly contemplated, until now, the idea of playing with another adult. Pardon, amendment: she had not contemplated playing with any _specific _other adult. The vague notions of grown men at her feet had never been far from her mind when she would touch herself at the places where Monsieur du Bois first brought her such pleasures four years ago, and where numerous boys had followed, unseen by his jealous gaze.

Lily cocked her head to one side as she contemplated the retreating Professor Snape, his long black robes swaying from side to side in slow, regal motion. This was a fine specimen. The fact that the entire school cowered away from him in fear would only add to the conquest. This, this would be worth a try.

A nagging little feeling of something akin to guilt began creeping up from her subconscious, but Lily swiftly pushed it away. She owed nothing to her former Professeur de la Divination. Besides, it was all his fault that she were here, and he could not begrudge her a little amusement. It's not like she was ever his.

As Cho was walking her to the headmaster's office to be sorted into a house and receive her schedule, Lily spread a Cheshire smile as she thought that this new professor, if she could get him, would be even better than Pierre. Monsieur du Bois was hers, oh so hers, but there was a side to their dynamic that was not to her favor.

She had an advantage: he felt more for her than she had ever felt for him. But he, too, held some high cards: when he had touched her gently for the first time with his manly paws, she was but a little girl, inexperienced and naïve.

He was her first. She was not his. She eventually grew to take more control. He eventually learned to plead and to beg, to kneel and cover her beloved diminutive toes with wet kisses. But it was he who had taught her everything from the very beginning, it was he even that invented that kneeling and those pathetic caresses. It was from him that she had learned every move and every trick, as she sometimes morbidly recalled while practicing said tricks on some eager youth. Even as she took on more lovers, they were only boys and could not compare to his imposing manliness – _he _was both first and last.

But perhaps with a new adult, she could have the advantage without the downside. Her youth and its accompanying beauty would assure that the virile male would feel for her a need surpassing that that what she felt for him; making him dispensable and her – adored. And she had enough experience now to enter a relationship on an equal footing, in regards to sexual connaissance. The thought of a feared and respected, experienced, mature man as her plaything excited her.

Before entering the headmaster's office, Lily's eagerness had overflown into excessive audacity, and she quipped: "Hey Cho, you want to bet I could have Professor Snape eat out of my hand by the end of the year?"

"How do you mean?" Again with those widened, half-frightened eyes.

"Quite simple, ma cherie. What do you think are the odds that before the summer holidays, Mr. Snape will kneel at my feet, quite willingly, no imperius curse or any of that sort of nonsense. Just kneel and beg, like a good little slut."

"Lily!" She exclaimed, appalled, and made a hushing sound. What over-disciplined, over-careful girl.

"Well, what do you think are the odds?"

"None," Cho determinedly shook her head. "There's no way he'd kneel and beg off his own accord, certainly not to one of his students."

"Well, then, how about I give you ten to one? If I'm right and he does, then you give me ten galleons. If not – I give you one. Sounds fair?"

Cho was still methodically shaking her head. "Sure. If you're that eager to part with that galleon." Then she left Lily to see Dumbledore, still marveling at the absurdity of her new friend.

Half an hour later, schedule in hand and Gryffindor badge on her chest (the soft smile that graced the headmaster's lips during her sorting hinted that he was by no means impartial to the four houses – and in fact seemed to favor Gryffindor), Lily Evans set out to class. As fate would have it, she had potions first. She was the first and only student – in Severus's almost four decades of teaching in his two combined lifetimes – to be _excited _about walking into Professor Snape's class late. But the newly-minted Gryffindor was audacity personified. _What better way to make sure he notices me?_

And notice her he did, oh yes he did. She could see the way his eyes scanned the length of her body when he stood there, silent as a fish, after her dramatic entrance. Even glamorous Lily Evans had not anticipated Professor Snape's admiration to be so strong – and so immediate. And _this _was the most feared professor of Hogwarts?

To her, he seemed to behave almost as an awe-struck teenage boy. She actually had to call him out of his reverie.

Just to make sure, Lily engaged in a further experiment of asking her neighbor, a prettyish brown-haired boy by the name of Frank Parker, to share his book, and in so doing leaned unnecessary close to her adolescent companion. Professor Snape took the bait. The look he gave to her and Mr. Parker said it all: it had taken Lily Evans all of thirty minutes to make Professor Snape hers.

Lily amused herself the following morning by walking into the Potions classroom with a speck of whipped cream from breakfast on her perfect little upturned nose. She was pleased to note the way Professor Snape's eyes grew a shade darker, and his fingers twitched, then curled instantly into precautionary fists.

She played it safe, and seated herself next to the same Frank Parker. And smiled brightly when he pointed out her little mess, and leaned closer, and allowed him to wipe it off with tremblingly eager fingers. And then relished in the look of fiery rage that their Professor threw them as those angular fingers rested a second too long on her freckled cheeks.

"Mr. Parker, please recite all steps in preparation of Felix Felicis." A notoriously difficult potion. Detention for Mr. Parker.

Oddly enough, Lily's small but telling victories went unnoticed by her classmates, and over the week that followed she was able to make several dozen more bets akin to the one she had secured with Ms. Cho. If her memory served her right, Lily was anticipating a good four hundred galleons out of the "Snape affair."

Perhaps this dreary old England had its charm and Hogwards truly was beautiful. For two short, lovely weeks Lily Evans felt happy and... free. Until one cloudy afternoon she received a letter from Pierre that contained nothing but the sweetest endearments, but left her feeling dirty, sick, melancholic.


End file.
